The Stones claimed many ships, prompting calls for a lighthouse to be built, but nothing came of plans until the wreck of the iron screw steamer SS Nile during a storm on 30 November 1854.

Many applications have been made from time to time concerning the erection of a light to warn mariners against this dangerous reef, but it has never been attended to, and to that account may be attributed the destruction of hundreds of lives and a mass of property ... Scarcely a month passes by in the winter season without some vessel striking on these rocks, and hundreds of poor fellows have perished there in dark dreary nights without one being left to tell the tale.

The first light was an oil lamp within a large (first-order) revolving catadioptric optic by Henri Lepaute of Paris, which flashed white every ten seconds; it consisted of 24 Fresnel lens panels with multiple rows of reflecting prisms above and below.

The main light's rotation was powered by a clockwork motor, driven by a large weight that descended down a cavity in the wall of the tower.

[5] Initially, the lighthouse was staffed by two keepers at a time, working two months on and one month off, but landing keepers by boat was always a perilous activity at Godrevy and in 1933 the lighthouse was automated: a new second-order fixed catadioptric lens was installed together with an acetylene burner activated by a sun valve; the new light had a flashing characteristic and a red sector was incorporated which replaced the subsidiary red light.

[6] Godrevy Light by Charles Thomas and Jessica Mann describes the history of this lighthouse and shows the many works of art it inspired.